


The sun dies out

by uumuu



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, No Dialogue, Obsession, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-26 07:51:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2643989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mahtan loved Fëanor more than anybody imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The sun dies out

In the end, with nothing left but bitterness to nurture, he realised that there hadn't truly been a choice for him after falling in love with Fëanáro. After taking Fëanáro to his bed.

Mahtan didn't remember much of that first time so many years before. He had been too aroused, too ecstatic for the details to impress themselves clearly in his mind. He remembered that Fëanáro had been warm and pliant, and had welcomed his caresses like a starving man might have accepted little crumbs of food. 

Fëanáro had been a fragile creature, desperate not so much for affection as for the certainty of it. Mahtan had believed he could ensure it to him. He made promises in hoarse whispers, while his hands groped and stroked, sliding up and down smooth yielding skin, and his ears took in every moan and whimper like the most sublime song.

Fëanáro had been young, too young for passion, and Mahtan ought never to have burdened him with it, with its entanglements. But then Fëanáro had married his daughter while he was still too young. 

Mahtan had been happy, and selfishly relieved.

It was a step closer, a lasting – sanctioned – link between them, though not nearly close enough (but enough was forever out of his reach; he couldn't have enough without putting everything he had on the line).

Their relationship hadn't ceased. Mahtan held onto his devotion to Aulë but betrayed his Lord in his very Halls, for whenever Fëanáro visited, alone or with the rest of his family, they invariably ended up in bed together. 

In his room, where his wife no longer trod, Mahtan knelt at Fëanáro's feet and worshipped him with a reverence Aulë never had commanded, and never would. His lips slowly trailed up from his thighs to his groin, and the acts he performed then should have made him ashamed as a father too, but shame had no purchase over the burning tingle that cut through his skin wherever they touched. Shame shrunk to nothingness next to the exaltation of burying himself inside Fëanáro. Fëanáro trusted him, and gave himself freely until their bodies were spent and they lay in each other's arms like newlyweds. 

Shame always reared its head afterwards, before Fëanáro's wistful gaze as he hugged him upon leaving. Shame pursued him in the mechanical acts of his everyday service. 

At length, the cracks began to show. 

His daughter came back. He praised her, comforted her ( _he was never_ yours _to begin with_ , his mind hissed). He could see that she was drained, and angry, because her children cleaved to their father, and seemed not to care for her distress.

Mahtan was a coward as well as a hypocrite. Even in the face of Nerdanel's sorrow he couldn't help but be gladdened that his grandsons were still with Fëanáro, that they provided their father with that stability Mahtan had been unable to give him. He was glad even when they left for Formenos with him. He should have done something then. He should have tried talking to Fëanáro – reassured him, rebuked him, _anything_. He had a responsibility to, he couldn't expect his grandsons to _be him_ , to do what he should have been doing, what only he could do.

But he was coward, and when things fell apart he hid. He bowed to the Valar, heeded Aulë's warnings, so that when Fëanáro came to look for him on his way from Formenos to Tirion he refused to see him. It was the right – the upright – thing to do. 

He had work, too. There were the vessels for the sun and the moon to ready. He put all his effort into that, hoping to forget, and to expiate at the same time. 

The sun would be bright and burn, and overshadow even his fire. 

And then, during the first stages of the work a maia brought news of his death. Not to him of course, to Nerdanel. 

The sun burned out before ever rising. 

Incongruously, it was the idea that Fëanáro would never set eyes on it which drove the last nail into the casket around his heart.

He had publicly said he rued the day he had taught Fëanáro metalwork. What he truly rued was the day he stopped standing by him, because doing so would have exposed him too much. Sex only required a closed room, vows could be uttered in the darkness, anything else had to be done in the light. He had sworn to be everything to Fëanáro, he ended up being nothing. He made the same mistakes as Finwë, and compounded them by cravenness. He had hated Finwë more than any other living being, and yearned to take Fëanáro away from him, yet it was Finwë who stood by Fëanáro to the bitter end.

He could probably not have saved Fëanáro regardless, even so that notion – reasonable as it was – didn't relieve him of the guilt of not trying, not when all he saw in the memory-mere his mind had become was the forlorn, sullen boy that looked up to him as to a guide and a protector. 

And he was tired of doing the right thing: it had never helped.

He didn't rue the first knife Fëanáro had forged, and gifted to him, jealously guarded in a box under his bed. The blade was not too well balanced, but it fulfilled the one purpose it hadn't been intended for. It gashed his skin smoothly, released his blood, and his fëa from limitations and principles. It ransomed him to its maker, and for ever.


End file.
